Obama Win: Not a Mandate

Alex Uzarowicz joined TheCollegeConservative from Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois. Born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, he emigrated to the Chicago with his parents at age eleven, and became a U.S. citizen in the past year. Uzarowicz was a contributor at The Knox Student, and currently resides in Downers Grove, Illinois.

Tuesday night’s election results are a wake-up call to both major parties. People are tired of the same old politics. They were especially tired this election with both candidates.

Only 54 percent of the American people were either very satisfied or fairly satisfied with the candidates-the lowest since 1992. That’s why President Obama endured with a 2 percent edge over Governor Mitt Romney with the popular vote. To all my liberal friends out there, Obama gets no mandate. But people don’t get understand. This was pretty evident when I saw crowds here at Knox College cheering like it was Flunk Day. Well guys, 2012 is not 2008. Obama won by landslide with the electoral vote but almost tied Romney with the popular vote. That means that almost half of this country still doesn’t agree with the Obama’s policies. That’s why Obama needs to sit down and compromise with Republicans just like Republicans need to talk to the president.

The important issues need to be addressed– the deficit, jobs, energy independence, immigration, middle east, education-you name it. People didn’t elect Obama to ram his policies down our throats. They elected him by a slim margin to moderate his policies.

That means in order to balance the budget and close the deficit there must be some liberal and conservative ideas. Simpson-Bowles got it right when it proposed to cut spending and increase taxes. I would love to embrace a much more conservative plan that only cuts spending, since I oppose increasing taxes especially when there is a stagnant 2 percent economic growth. The Dow Jones dropped 312.95 points Wednesday, to its lowest since three months. Our economic situation is not healthy.

But this is not about conservative ideas beating liberal ideas or vice versa. This is about putting our national interests first. If increasing taxes will get Democrats to sit down and agree to budget cuts, then so be it. Our government needs to cut its expenditures or else they will have a problem funding our essential social services such as Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. All federal dollars will go to these federal programs by 2026 if nothing is done.

The job crisis is just as important as well. Mitt Romney didn’t lie about our economic situation. There are 23 million Americans who are not satisfied with today’s situation. They are either underemployed, unemployed, working part-time jobs, or simply defeated and stopped looking for a job. Their needs to be a long term proposal that would grant businesses incentives to hire, not impose more government regulations.

The bad example would be to follow Speaker of the House John Boehner’s and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s footsteps. They believe that moving to a more conservative position will fix things. The thing is that they don’t have control of the Senate and, in fact, they don’t have it because they embraced embarrassing candidates that spoke more about rape than people’s financial problems. Todd Akin and Richard Murdock were two undisciplined candidates that made many on the right scratch their heads.

Both parties need to compromise; that’s the political reality. Our country depends on it.

I voted for Romney/Ryan because I thought that they would be a much more bi-partisan administration. Governor Romney did work with an 87 percent Democratic legislature. I admire the fact that politicians can get things done by working with people from the opposite party. That’s how our system was created.

We don’t have a parliamentary system where one party gets elected to deliver their party platforms. Our founders didn’t believe in creating political parties and allowing them to govern. As James Madison wrote in The Federalist, human passions “divided mankind into parties, inflamed them with mutual animosity, and rendered them much more disposed to vex and oppress each other than to co-operate for their common good.” Political parties force statesmen to serve their own interests rather than the country’s.

Obama, Boehner, and McConnell have to go back to basics. They need to serve the common good.

The Value of Individualism

22 Responses

Chelle: I hope Matty is not a friend of yours. I think you and I agree he has mental problems as he just told you to: “Fuck off.” If he is in any way representative of a conservative then the whole movement is doomed. Thank you, Chelle, for your rational and thoughtful comments. Just for fun I think I will keep posting here and maybe either Matty will seek mental help or just go completely insane and be “locked-up”.

Oh, Matty luv is not a friend of mine. He’s actually my stalker. He tends to comment on everything I post and he talks to other commenters about me and he’s just obessed!

You’ll see above that he even noticed that I was gone for a bit. That’s a speical kind of crazy to track other commenters and their actions.

Like I said, he really is insane, doesn’t contribute anything and actually says flat out lies. But he’s a conservative, so the people who run this site won’t actually do anything about him.

I like to image him typing up his comments with his mouth foaming. I kind of do feel sorry for him, since I think its odd that he seems to invest so much time into the other commenters and has self appointed himself as a “moderator.” In the end, all you have to do is laugh because even the other conservative commenters are embrassed of him.

Matthew: Are you on drugs or just simply insane? Might be a good idea for you to have a mental evaluation before you hurt yourself or someone. Noticed they sentenced Jared Loughner yesterday….lets hope the next one isn’t you. Please take a chill-pill and show some maturity. You wouldn’t know a Marxist if it come up and bit you in the ass.

No, I am just letting complete fucking morons and delusional liars know they are not welcome here.

Fuck you, Chelle, and fuck off.

Chelle
Nov 12, 2012 - 07:39 PM

Ah, Matty! Did you take over this site while I was gone?

Oh, you didn’t? So your opinion means nothing?

How sad does a person have to be to spend his time on a site that’s not him moderating commenters when no one’s asked him too or want him too.

I’m sure the people who created this place because they wanted a discussion love you’re attempt at censoring people.

Jim Prokop
Nov 09, 2012 - 03:53 PM

Alex: Pretty good post…one of the better I have seen in a long time. No President Obama does not have a mandate but he does have some increased power and leverage now that he is re-elected and has a solid Democrat Senate. Yes, both sides need to come together and FIX the economic mess; the Democrats need to agree to some budget cuts and the Republicans need to repudiate the worst nut-jobs in the party agree to some substantial tax increases.

And…Dave…you are as full of shit as a Christmas goose. Same old same old.. but really Obama is a socialist…of course that’s what the nut jobs said about Roosevelt (Teddy & Franklin) Truman,Kennedy,Johnson,Carter,Clinton and oh ya they even said it about Eisenhower and Nixon. Evidence..well the hard left said some good things about these guys. So there you have it. As I recall the Aryan Nations Folks had some nice things to say about President Reagan so Reagan must have been in “bed” with them…right? I really don’t think so. Got it…Dave!

Matthew: If money is the problem I can steer you to where you can get some help for free. But, no doubt, you are on mommy & daddy’s insurance policy…now till 26 ya know. But, if mommy & daddy don;t have insurance I am sure we can get you covered by Medicaid.

Dave
Nov 09, 2012 - 05:20 AM

Better news for you progressives:

Communist Party USA leader Sam Webb, has hailed the election of Party “friend” Barack Obama, as the “dawn of a new era.”
The Party is cock-a-hoop over Obama’s victory, seeing it as both a repudiation of the conservative agenda and an opportunity to move the United States further towards socialism.

Obamacare was invented by Romney for Massachusetts. Good/bad?
It’s hard to take Republicans seriously. They seem to be rent-a-cops for the AIPAC wing of the Israel movement. At least the Democrats stand for something: the two state solution: racism-lite. Of course it doesn’t make any sense to expect the Palestinians to pay for and run their own concentration camp. But it’s something more than silence, which is the AIPAC/Republican plan.
But that’s looking back. The question is a post-racism/post-Israel world, retooling the US economy away from its doomsday/last-stand scenario. Let’s put it in classic Republican terms. Lincoln suspended habeus corpus for the Civil War. Let’s declare the Union the winner in that war and slavery the loser, reinstate habeus corpus, and let the public know they don’t have to fear the lynch mob any more.

It’s amazing how people still think its Obama’s fault for not “reaching across the aisle.” The Republicans had one stated goal – make Obama a one term president. They attempted it – 87% of the bills passed by the Senate were blocked by the House. Hell, the simple fact is Obamacare was originally a GOP think tank idea – and they rejected it because Obama proposed it first.

(And actually, Obamacare is a social budget cut from the government – it moved people off Medicad/Medicare and it lowering what states pay out to hostipals when people who have no insurances don’t pay their bills. And yet there was still whinning about that.)

Bipartisan doesn’t mean Democrats do whatever the Republicans want – and that’s what you were banking on. It had nothing to do with Romney being about to reach out – which is bullshit because he didn’t work well with Democrats a governor. You wanted the Republicans to hold the majority – this has nothing to do with team work.

One article on this site was complaining about how Democrat Presidents loving entitlment programs. I correctly pointed out that Clinton reformed the welfare program and moved people off it. That author said to me “yes, he finally reached across the aisle!” No, no he didn’t – Clinton ran on welfare reform before he became president.

Point? Republicans had 8 years of Democrats agreeing with them on things. Obama fought four years against a party that wouldn’t budge.

If you want to get stuff done, look to your party. Tell them to try Obama’s way – after all, a lot more economists agree with Obama’s plan than Romney’s. If you want to get your people elected, look at the groups who overwhemling voted Obama. Yes, Romney has almost half the country on his side. But Obama has the majority of the racial minorities and women on his side. Something to consider.